


The Kindness of Strangers

by comealongpixie



Series: Mirror, Mirror (Earth-645) [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Major Original Character(s), Morally Ambiguous Character, OC-centric, Pre-Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 12:16:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11805843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comealongpixie/pseuds/comealongpixie
Summary: Leila Whittaker's history with SHIELD, starting with her recruitment and ending with a very special mission from Director Fury.





	1. Chapter 1

_Time to give in to the kindness of strangers_

**\--Kinda Outta Luck // Lana del Rey**

 

Clint hates police precincts.

It’s not that he hates police, usually. Out on the street, he has nothing against them, as long as they stay out of his way. Which they almost always do, and when they don’t it’s only long enough for him to flash his S.H.I.E.L.D. badge. Which he hates having to do, for the same reason he hates being inside police precincts.

He’s been the guy with the badge for a long time now, but there’s parts of him that don’t believe it. There’s parts of him that are still the circus thief, and he feels like he’s pretending when he pulls out a badge and tells a cop to get out of his way, that he’s got it handled.

Those parts of him are easy to ignore, mostly, but they get louder when he’s inside a police precinct. The criminal in him feels like he’s in the belly of the beast, get out while you still can, you idiot, **RUN-**

The criminal in him sounds a lot like his brother, actually.

Clint sets his badge on the counter. “I’m Agent Barton I’m here to see Leila Whittaker this is now a federal case,” he recites boredly. It’s actually technically an international one, but “federal” invites less questions.

The woman behind the counter shoots him a nasty look-it’s always an insult, having a case that seems perfectly ordinary snatched by the higher ups (again: he cannot believe that he, somehow, now counts as The Higher Ups) but he knows that if any of them knew what they were really dealing with, they’d be grateful to have the problem taken off their hands.

The woman stands up, says “Follow me,” and heads off down a hallway. He does.

When Coulson first gave them the assignment, Clint thought it was below their pay grade, because on paper it seemed like a simple recruitment operation-talk to the girl, tell her she can join S.H.I.E.L.D. or go to prison.

Then he read her file, and suddenly it felt like a matter of public safety and secrecy, and very much within their paygrade. Above it, even.

And yet, here he is anyway.

The woman unlocks interrogation room for him. “There you go, agent ,” she says disdainfully.

“Much obliged, officer,” he replies carelessly, and steps inside.

Leila Whittaker looks like she did in her file-a tall, wasp-waisted brunette-except that she looks older now than she did in the pictures, which means she’s been doing a decent job at staying off the radar, and that she’s added a hot pink streak to her hair that wasn’t there before.

And she carries herself the way you’d expect a person of mass destruction to do so-like she doesn’t have a care in the world.

After Clint read her file, he asked Coulson if they knew what abilities the kid had picked up since they lost track of her.

“No idea,” was all the bastard’d had to say. “Best of luck.”

Whittaker looks at him. “Are you my lawyer?” she asks sarcastically. “Cause-”

Clint doesn’t bother trying to think of a quip, just snaps the bracelets onto her wrists before she realizes what he’s doing, and then sits down and hopes they work.

“Sorry, you’ll need those for the arraignment,” he says in his best lawyer voice, before he can help himself. “Oh, look at that! I wasn’t gonna do a line, but it happened.”

Whittaker doesn’t look amused. He stops smiling. On the plus side, the bracelets seem to be working. That or she’s decided to hold back now. Either way, they haven’t had the opposite effect of making her uncontrollably more powerful, which is good.

The girl studies the bracelets carefully, and spends a moment or two trying to pry one off. It doesn’t give.

She sighs and looks up at him. “Well?”

Clint studies her and leaned forward. “Tell me something, kid. You could’ve been out of here before anyone knew you were here to begin with. Is there a reason you decided to stick around, or are you just holding a 2-7?”

Whittaker studies him. Her face is mostly blank, but he can tell from her posture, from a slight widening of her eyes, that she’s distinctly uncomfortable with him in a way that she wasn’t before. She didn’t know he knew.

She’s still trying to get the bracelets off. She’s trying to make it look like she’s just rubbing her wrists out of discomfort. She probably thinks she’s being subtle, and maybe it would work on someone else, but Clint’s a spy-and more importantly, he’s tried that trick before himself. With handcuffs instead of weird scifi superpower-negating bracelets, but it’s a similar concept.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replies nonchalantly.

“Really.” Clint tilts his head to the side, annoyed, and slides her a file. Her file. “Do you know what happened in December of 2004?” he asks. “Because I do.”

Whittaker blanches at this, but keeps her poker face in place and opens the file. She flips through it for a moment, then looks up.

“Feel like cooperating now?” he asks.

“That’d be easier to answer if I knew who I was cooperating with,” she replies, sounding annoyed. “For everything you seem to know about me, I don’t know anything about you.”

Clint leans forward. “I’m Agent Barton. I’m with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.”

“That sounds made up.”

“Okay, I’m with S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“That still sounds made up.”

“Yeah, well...it’s not, okay? It’s a thing.”

“You sound defensive.”

“You sound like a murderer.”

The smirk falls from Whittaker’s face, and her entire body language changes. She stiffens; her face goes more flat than before. Her eyes turn steely and cold.

“You sound like someone who needs to get to the goddamn point or stop wasting my fucking time,” she snaps.

Clint shrugs. “Fair.” He leans forward. “I’m hear to offer you a deal.”

He waits for her to respond, but she gives him a look, like, okay? are you gonna elaborate? or. So he does.

“You can either spend the rest of your life in a specially designed cell that’ll cut off all access to your abilities.”

“That doesn’t sound like something you’re legally allowed to do-”

“- or ,” he continues, trying not to sound as annoyed as he is at her interruption, “you can join our organization and help us take down people like you.”

“People like me.”

“People with abilities. People using those abilities to cause trouble.”

Whittaker tilts her head, looking intrigued. “And why do you want a ‘murderer’ working for you?”

“It’s not like we know of any non-murder-y people who can steal other people’s superpowers.”

“I don’t steal them, I cop-” Whittaker shuts her mouth suddenly, as if she feels she’s said too much. She studies him, and then says “So the offer is that I can either use my...skillset, to help your shady as fuck X-files department, or you’ll take them away?”

“Take the X-oh. Your-oh. Yeah, that’s the offer on the table.”

She studies him another moment, and then shrugs. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Sure.” She leans back in her chair. “Do you guys have health insurance?”

“Uhm. Yeah, we get health insurance.” He’s slightly unsettled at the ease with which she seems to have made this decision-she seems genuinely relaxed now, not the faux-cavalier attitude she had when he first came in-but he brushes it off. “You don’t end up using it a lot, cause they give you a mandatory check-up after missions and you kinda figure if SHIELD’s best and brightest don’t notice that you have, like, a tumor or whatever, then you probably don’t have one-but, that’s not my conversation to have. We’ll have someone debrief you before you sign anything. At least, they did that with me; I’m not sure what the protocol is for…” he gestures vaguely in her direction. She smirks.

“Well, thanks for the heads-up, Agent Barton,” she says.

He just glares, and stands up. “Extraction’s waiting three blocks away,” he tells her. “I have a car outside. Try to act natural.”

“I’ll do my best.”

* * *

 

**Five Days**

**Three Years**

**Four Months**

**And Sixteen Hours Later**

“So why do you want to join S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

Agent Hill’s office is cold, and dim, and windowless, and looks nothing like an office. It feels more like an interrogation room, and maybe that’s what this is. It definitely doesn’t feel like a job interview.

Leila taps her fingers on the table. The obvious answer is that they threatened to lock her up if she didn’t, but she feels like she’ll get further in SHIELD if she makes it seem like she’s not being held here against her will. And of course, saying that she wants to help keep people safe is not an option. It’s blatantly transparent and borderline ass-kissing.

Which leaves option number three: The truth. Or part of it. Unfortunately.

Leila sighs. “Before S.H.I.E.L.D….contacted me-”

“You mean found you after you got arrested?”

“Nuance.” Leila waves a hand. “I...was having trouble finding other people like me. People with powers.”

“We’ve been calling them ‘Gifteds.’”

“Gifted s ?” Leila asks, drawing out the last letter. “Like...plural? Like as a noun?”

Hill doesn’t respond, just gives her an unimpressed look.

“Who decided that? Did any ‘gifteds’ have a role in choosing the name? Because if not, that seems kind of unfair. Hey, what about calling us mu-”

“Get to the point, Whittaker.”

Leila relaxes again, slouching against the back of the chair.

“The point is, my power doesn’t work without other people’s powers, and there’s not, like, a facebook for ‘gifteds’ or whatever. So when Barton told me I’d get to help find and catch people with powers...I thought this seemed like a good opportunity.”

“And the fact that he threatened to lock you up without the use of your powers didn’t have anything to do with it?” Hill asks skeptically.

“I’m actually still not convinced you guys can do that. Scientifically or legally.” The bracelets may have seemed intimidating in the interrogation room, but she’s learned since then that they’re not as infallible as Barton had led her to believe.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. is an international organization, we don’t follow federal regulation.”

“Firstly, that horrifies me. Secondly, the U.N. still exists, I think. And thirdly, how come almost every one of you has been American?”

Agent Hill doesn’t miss a beat. “You’re one to talk, the U.N. doesn’t know about us, and one of our founders was English.”

“Fair, still horrifying, and yeah, I know, Agent Carter, I went to spy school. But every agent I’ve met in real life has been American.”

“Not all of them,” Hill replies carelessly. “Some of them are just good at pretending.”

“Why would they want to pretend?”

Hill smiles faintly. “You’re the field agent. You tell me.” And with that, she slides a badge across the table. “Welcome to SHIELD, Agent Whittaker.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leila's SHIELD history, told through memories and case files.

Five Days. That's how much time she spends in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody while the paperwork gets filed.

An intern comes in-at least, she thinks he's an intern; she has no concrete proof of this, except that he gives off a very nervous, green vibe-and hands her a tablet, and a single leaf of paper. Most of their paperwork is digital now, he says, but they like to keep a few hard copies just in case.

He also informs her that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s had her legal name changed to Leila Whittaker, so she doesn't have to worry about that. Leila's not sure how she feels about that. It's considerate, in the shady big brother organization kind of way you’d expect, but it also demonstrates an insight into her past that she doesn't like people having. The intern doesn't specify who made the change happen, just “SHIELD” and it conjures an idea of this entire organization, down to every last agent, knowing who she is and where she comes from, and even though she knows the thought is irrational, it sends an uncomfortable chill down her spine, the first time she's felt afraid since before Clint Barton walked into her holding cell.

Mostly, though, she's just glad they don't make her sign her birth name.

 

S.H.I.E.L.D. EYES ONLY  
Clearance Level 4  
Case: #348253  
[ The following is a transcript of the debriefing of Agent Leila Whittaker. Debriefing done by Agent Lachlan Foreman. ]

Foreman: Agent Whittaker?  
Whittaker: Present.

Foreman: Hi. I’m Agent Foreman. This is just a formal review of the how the mission went. We’ll be doing these after every field mission. Note that we’ll be cross-checking with your S.O. to confirm.  
Whittaker: Do you do that with every field agent, or just the bad apples?

Foreman: We do this with all our agents.  
Whittaker: And here I thought I was special.

Foreman: Why would you think that?  
Whittaker: The fact that you send me with a babysitter, for one.

Foreman: Believe it or not, agent, you’re not our first operative with a less than ideal past.  
Whittaker: You mean this sketchy secret organization that operates out of an invisible floating airport isn’t opposed to hiring ex-criminals? Shocking.

Foreman: Mm. So how did your first mission go?  
Whittaker: Oh, it was an experience. Two very enthusiastic thumbs up.

Foreman: Tell me the target’s name.  
Whittaker: Tabitha Workman.

Foreman: Were you successful in apprehending her?  
Whittaker: Yes.

[Papers shuffling]

Foreman: How did you apprehend her?  
Whittaker: Quickly.

Foreman: I meant, in terms of method.  
Whittaker: She’s alive, if that’s what you’re asking. She’s in custody.

Foreman: Does she have any special abilities?  
Whittaker: Yes. She’s immune to radiation, apparently. Which is kind of a lame superpower, comparatively speaking.

Foreman: Okay. So what powers were you holding when you went into the field?  
Whittaker: Pyrokinesis, enhanced speed, camouflage, enhanced agility, electrokinesis.

Foreman: And what powers are you holding now?  
Whittaker: See above.

Foreman: So you didn’t copy or take Workman’s ability?  
Whittaker: No.

Foreman: Why not?  
Whittaker: Strategy. All of the powers I have now are ones I like more than hers, and they were more than enough to take her down. Taking her power was unnecessary and unappealing.

Foreman: So you didn’t want to put down your toys long enough to take hers.  
Whittaker: Not the metaphor I would have chosen, but you’re not wrong.

[Papers shuffling; chair sliding back]

Foreman: Alright. Go to the lab, they’ll need you to perform a proof of status check. Just double-checking that you’re right about what powers you’re holding. After that, you can go home. If we need you to perform a removal, we’ll let you know.  
Whittaker: I’ll take my phone off vibrate, then.

 

Three Years. That's how long she spends at SHIELD's Academy of Operations, and she spends most of it as a giant bruise.

For the first three months, she's forced into the wristbands Barton put on her at the precinct, and no one connects them with the frequent migraines and numbness until they break and she causes a capital-i Incident, which is the name of the report they file when she accidentally sets a training field on fire.

After SHIELD is satisfied that Leila didn't stage the entire thing herself, that it was really an accident, they're forced to resort to an honor system, where she crosses her heart and hopes to die that she won't use her powers unless they tell her to.

And she doesn't, at least not when other people are around. Sometimes when she's alone she likes to spark up her fingers and watch the flame burn out slowly, like a candle. There's no sinister purpose behind this; she just finds it relaxing, a nice way to end a long day of getting punched and punching back.

But she knows her word doesn't count for much around here, so she keeps it to herself.

 

S.H.I.E.L.D. EYES ONLY  
Clearance Level 4  
Case: #348255  
[ The following is a transcript of the debriefing of Agent Leila Whittaker. Debriefing done by Agent Lachlan Foreman. ]

Foreman: Tell me about the mission.  
Whittaker: SHIELD sent me to apprehend a man with the ability to manipulate air….?

Foreman: Aerokinesis.  
Whittaker: Right. That.

Foreman: What was his name?  
Whittaker: Anguo Chang.

Foreman: Were you successful?  
Whittaker: Yes. He was good, so as soon as I got close enough, I took his power and I brought him in.

Foreman: He’s alive?  
Whittaker: Yes.

Foreman: Which existing ability did you trade out?  
Whittaker: Pyrokinesis.

Foreman: Please list for me the abilities you held while going into the field.  
Whittaker: Pyrokinesis, enhanced agility, enhanced speed, enhanced stealth, camouflage.

Foreman: Please list for me the abilities you hold now.  
Whittaker: Isn’t this getting repetitive?

Foreman: We like to be thorough.  
Whittaker: [sigh] Aerokinesis, enhanced agility, enhanced speed, etc etc.

Foreman: Agent.  
Whittaker: ...Enhanced stealth and camouflage.

Foreman: Thank you. Head to the lab to perform the proof of status check. While you’re there, you can switch your abilities back.  
Whittaker: No, we don’t have a sample for the guy I got the pyrokinesis from.

Foreman: ...Really.  
Whittaker: Really, really.

Foreman: Then why trade out that ability?  
Whittaker: It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Foreman: Oh, I’m sure.  
Whittaker: It was an honest mistake.

Foreman: You don’t strike me as the type for honest mistakes, Agent.  
Whittaker: Maybe you hang around spies too much, my man. You’re getting twitchy.

Foreman: [Sigh] Just answer one other question for me.  
Whittaker: Shoot.

Foreman: Why take the woman’s powers at all?  
Whittaker: It’s got more practical applications, I think.

Foreman: And here I thought you liked playing with fire.  
Whittaker: I do. But I also like to be able to put them out.

 

Four Months. That's how long she spends as SHIELD's lab rat, and it's insufferable for the first few weeks, being poked and prodded at and taped and told how high to jump.

But then the results start coming in.

Leila thought she knew her powers pretty well. This was her understanding of them before SHIELD:  
She can copy other people's superpowers  
Copying powers requires physical contact with the original host  
Physical contact with another "gifted" will always result in power replication  
She can hold up to three powers at a time; if she acquires a fourth power, one of the first three will disappear, with no pattern as to which one disappears.

By the end of the test period, her understanding has expanded to:  
She can copy other people's superpowers, or she can take them  
Copying powers requires physical contact with the original host, or with a DNA sample of said host  
Physical contact with another gifted or a DNA sample of one will only result in power replication if she wants it to.  
She can hold up to five powers at a time, but must choose carefully. Some powers seem to take up more energy than others. The SHIELD scientist heading the study compares it to a harddrive with limited space. Too many heavy files and her entire system will slow down.  
If she tries, she can control which power disappears when she takes a new one.

It's not even knowing that she's more powerful than she thought she was (although that is, of course, delightful.) Just knowing how it works, knowing the rules and limits and mechanisms of the only thing in her life she would consider a gift-

It's like now that she understands it, she can grasp it, she can keep it. It's hers. It's the one thing no one can take from her, not SHIELD techies with their bracelets, not asshole ex-boyfriends, not-

She sleeps better, knowing that she has something solid to stand on.

 

S.H.I.E.L.D. EYES ONLY  
Clearance Level 4  
Case: #348259  
[ The following is a transcript of the debriefing of Agent Leila Whittaker. Debriefing done by Agent Lachlan Foreman. ]

Foreman: Alright, so who was the target this time?  
Whittaker: Seth. Seth Lennox.

[Papers shuffling]

Foreman: Mm. And my notes say that you knew the target prior to being recruited into SHIELD?  
Whittaker: You could say that.

Foreman: And does that have anything to do with your inability to apprehend him?  
Whittaker: I can assure you, there’s no love lost between me and Lennox.

Foreman: And do you think that contributed to this mission falling through?  
Whittaker: ….

Foreman: By which I mean, do you have any anger or rage towards the target that could have compromised your focus?  
Whittaker: I resent the insinuation that I experience emotions. It’s false and borderline slanderous.

Foreman: [Sigh] Fine. Can you tell me what was accomplished on this trip?  
Whittaker: I took his ability. It wasn’t a total waste.

Foreman: Please list for me the abilities you had when you went into the field.  
Whittaker: Aerokinesis, enhanced agility, enhanced speed, enhanced stealth, camouflage.

Foreman: And please list for me the abilities you’re holding now.  
Whittaker: Pyrokinesis, enhanced agility, enhanced speed, enhanced stealth, camouflage.

Foreman: Alright. Head to the lab for a proof of status check. If you want to switch out any of your abilities, you can talk to them about it there.  
Whittaker: Duly noted.

 

Sixteen Hours. That’s how long she spends on the plane from the lab to Maria Hill’s office, which is apparently located on the helicarrier, which is the fancy spy word for the giant floating base-slash-airfield. She’s heard of it, of course, and she imagined it must be something to that effect, given the name. Leila hasn’t been to real school, only spy school, but she knows that long words are usually made up of the same building blocks as smaller words.

Heli=Helicopter=flight. Carrier is more vague but it being taken from aircraft carrier seemed like the most likely scenario. Flying aircraft carrier.

Dissecting words like that isn’t the kind of thing one would typically classify as a survival skill. But then, Leila's life has been anything but typical.

She steps off the plane, and the wind whips her hair around, the sun finds her skin after so long in the cold quinjet, and she can feel the hum of the helicarrier's machinery under her feet, and it all feels very inescapably real in a way it hasn't before. 

She rolls her shoulders, and keeps walking.

 

S.H.I.E.L.D. EYES ONLY  
Clearance Level 6  
Misconduct Report  
[ The following is a transcript of the questioning of Agent Leila Whittaker following her misconduct in the case of Adam Bousaid. Debriefing done by Commander Maria Hill. ]

Hill: Let’s talk about the incident that occurred yesterday.  
Whittaker: Actually, it started four days ago.

Hill: This isn’t the time to be a smartass, Whittaker.  
Whittaker: I’m just trying to be thorough, ma’am.

Hill: Then tell me what happened.  
Whittaker: ...You were there, my dude.

Hill: Then tell the camera what happened.  
[A chair shifts]  
Whittaker: What do you want to know?

Hill: Let’s start with: why did you think it was appropriate to go after an unregistered gifted without being cleared first?  
Whittaker: In my defense, I submitted a request for authorization, but it took too long to go through.

Hill: Oh, I’m so sorry, our LAN was overloaded. You haven’t answered my question.  
Whittaker: The gifted in question had the ability of rapid learning. That's an invaluable addition to my skillset. I knew if I had that ability, I could immediately understand and use any other ability I acquired to it's full potential. But the mission authorization was taking too long. I didn’t want to lose track of him.

Hill: The gifted wasn’t hostile.  
Whittaker: I know. That’s why I didn’t take his ability. I didn’t even fight him, I shook his hand. Look, this was an opportunity we all would’ve been idiots to waste. Tell me I’m wrong.

Hill: I think you need to stop assuming you know better than an intelligence agency with over a half a century’s worth of experience. This incident might have turned out harmless, but we have these rules in place for a reason.  
Whittaker: Now you’re not answering my question.

Hill: You’re suspended until the end of the month.  
Whittaker: That’s fine. I’m sure I’ll find something to do with my time.

 

It’s eight glorious months in the field-tracking down gifteds, collecting new powers, and it feels like she might get closer to what she’s looking for-before she is, seemingly apropos of nothing, transferred to counterterrorism. 

Leila's last mission as a garden variety field agent is a big one, and at the end she doesn't remember a lot of it. Patrice Joh. Blinding light. Ending in fire. It almost feels like a dream, and if she didn't have the rapid healing ability to prove it, she might think that it was.

Her therapist is sure that it's because it's her first mission that ended in death. Leila's pretty sure that's shit, because it's not like Joh is the first person she's ever killed in her life, and the other times don't feel like dreams. They feel inescapably real.

She really doesn't want to take a psychiatric leave of absence or have to keep seeing the therapist or anything, though, so she lies and agrees and gets her fit-for-duty form signed, and then is promptly handed a new badge with a new designation and put on a new team with some new acquaintances (and one old one.) 

She doesn’t question it (at least, not beyond a snarky quip to Agent Hill that is met with what she’s assuming is an equally snarky quip hiding under a layer of vague spy terminology. She wasn’t listening that hard) but it strikes her as strange, because S.T.R.I.K.E. usually only takes specialists, and Leila’s only ever worked a mission alone once. She’s pretty sure SHIELD still doesn't trust her, that they aren’t certain that she won't decide she's tired of being one of the good guys and wander off back into the shadows.

(Leila has no such intentions-truthfully, she's not altogether convinced she's one of the good guys now at all. It's just not something she cares about. It's not why she's here.)

She also feels like the fact that her only official solo mission literally went up in flames should be a cause for more concern, not a cause for promotion, but she doesn’t ask about that either.

Barton, though, does. Leila’s team on STRIKE is made up of a Russian-born spy she’s only heard whispers about, and none other than Clint Barton, who seems as mystified by Leila’s presence as she is herself. He complains to his handler-their handler, now-a middle aged guy named Coulson who is perpetually decked out in a suit and tie and a wry smile. “I’m not a babysitter,” Barton complains, and Coulson responds with the spy terminology version of a shrug and a smile.

Coulson looks vaguely familiar to Leila, in a way she can’t place. She asks him if they’ve met before. He tells her he’s just got “one of those faces.” Then he asks her what she wants her codename to be.

“You don’t get the final word on it,” he tells her, “But we do take your input into account.”

She asks for the name “Snow White,” and by some miracle, it goes through.

Barton finds out, and looks at her skeptically. “Snow White? Really?”

Leila doesn’t feel like explaining it, and she doesn’t feel like lying either, so she forgoes the spy terminology, and just shrugs and smiles.

 

S.H.I.E.L.D. EYES ONLY  
Clearance Level 4  
Case: #824484  
[ The following is a transcript of the debriefing of Agent Leila Whittaker. Debriefing done by Agent Lachlan Foreman. ]

Foreman: Let’s start with the target’s name.  
Whittaker: Patrice Joh.

Foreman: Her ability?  
Whittaker: Rapid regenerative healing.

Foreman: Did you copy or take it?  
Whittaker: Yeah, I took it.

Foreman: List the powers you had before going into the field.  
Whittaker: Rapid learning, aerokinesis, enhanced agility, enhanced stealth.

Foreman: Just those four?  
Whittaker: Yeah. The rapid learning takes up a lot of space on the harddrive.

Foreman: Right. Did you switch any of those abilities out for the regenerative ability?  
Whittaker: I let go of the aerokinesis.

Foreman: You’re awfully subdued this time around, Whittaker.  
Whittaker: Just tired, sir.

Foreman: Hm. Alright. What happened to Joh?  
Whittaker: I killed her, sir. She was hostile.

Foreman: Were you able to bring in any DNA samples?  
Whittaker: No, sir. The fire pretty much destroyed everything.

Foreman: Is that why you’re “tired”?  
Whittaker: I don’t know what you mean, sir.

Foreman: Just that this is the first time you’ve killed someone in the field. It happens to all of us.  
Whittaker: ...I’m sure that’s it, yeah.

Foreman: Alright. I’d like to put in for a psych eval, just in case.  
Whittaker: I don’t feel like that’s necessary.

Foreman: I do.  
Whittaker: Fine. Do what you gotta do.

[Papers shuffling]

Foreman: After you’re done in the lab, I’d like you to step across the hall. Agent Hill wants to speak to you.  
Whittaker: ...Uh, okay. Am I in trouble again?

Foreman: That’s not the impression I got. I think it’s something about a transfer.  
Whittaker: Uhm. Sure. Yeah, I’ll talk to her.

Foreman: It wasn’t a question, but...  
Whittaker: No, but I think we all know I am.

Foreman: Was that a threat?  
Whittaker: An observation. It’s not like I haven’t noticed the short leash you all keep me on. For a spy organization, you’re not particularly subtle about it.

Foreman: You really are in rare form this evening, agent.  
Whittaker: Well, I can’t always be the charming young woman you’ve all come to expect, sir. We all have our days.

Foreman: There’s the Agent Whittaker I know.  
Whittaker: Does this mean I can skip the psych eval?

Foreman: Nice try.  
Whittaker: [sighs]

 

It's six months with Strike Team Delta, and in those four months, only three missions take place, and none of them involve gifteds.

Ostensibly, Leila should be enjoying the sudden abundance of free time. And it's not that she dislikes the missions themselves, either. Even the team isn't so bad. Coulson is inexplicably endearing while still easy to keep at arm’s length. The person who heads the department is nice enough, and pretty to look at, so there's that.

Outside of her and Barton, the team includes Romanoff, an agent Leila's only heard legends about, pre-transfer. Romanoff lives up to the legends, and is wary of Leila only a few sessions into their integration training, which is spy language for fighting each other to get a better read on their respective fighting styles, before fighting someone else, together.

After Romanoff adjusts to the idea of working directly with someone with powers, and Leila adjusts to the idea of working directly with someone else at all (her S.O. didn’t really do much; there's a reason she referred to him as her babysitter), they find a rhythm with each other. Natasha is always polite, but Leila can tell the point at which she decides she’s okay with Leila’s presence on her team, because immediately afterwards, Barton becomes more open to Leila’s presence on their team, presumably because he trusts Natasha’s judgment.

And this is all well and good and she even likes it, more than she thought she would; there's something fun about working as part of a team like this, at least as fun as espionage ever is (which is actually more fun than you might expect), but it's still not what she's here for.

After mission number three, she goes to Coulson's office to ask about tracking down gifteds in between S.T.R.I.K.E. operations, but Coulson isn't there. Instead, it's Nick Fury sitting at his desk, flipping through a manila file. He doesn't glance up in the slightest when Leila walks in.

"Agent Whittaker," he greets. "Just who I was looking for."

Leila's only met Fury a handful of times, and none of them were substantial. Mostly they involved passing each other in hallways or him talking to someone else while she happened to be in the room. She knows Natasha and Clint are familiar with him, but all the missions Leila's involved with come through Coulson or Rumlow. So the familiarity in Fury's voice when he addresses her is slightly unsettling, but she figures that SHIELD is super powerful, and Fury is in charge of SHIELD, so he's basically the closest thing to God that Leila's willing to believe in, and God knows all his children personally, or whatever. So okay.

"Uh...yeah. Just who...yeah, I wasn't looking for you, but you know, since you're here, maybe I can just ask you instead of having Coulson ask you for me."

"You want to go back to being a field agent."

"Yeah-I mean, kind of. I'd like to stay where I am, but I've got a lot of free time now, and I wanted to ask about going on field missions the way I used to in between STRIKE missions. I'm not trying to like...escape STRIKE altogether."

Fury sets the file down, and looks at her. He seems vaguely pleased by this, although maybe it's actually whatever he was reading that's brought that reaction out. She doesn't ask.

"I'll think about it," he says, and his voice carries the same tone that dads use on TV when their kids want to go to a concert with a friend and then sleepover, or whatever normal families do. "In the meantime, I'd like to ask you to do something for me."

"That's my job, sir."

"I'm asking as a formality. I'm nice like that." He hands her the file, and for a second she thinks it's going to be about her, like it was in the police precinct years ago. That they've found something out that they didn't already know about. Her entire time here, she's tried to ignore the fact that anyone around her could know more about her than anyone ever has, avoids thinking about it ever, but now she's got that chill down her spine again, and-

She stays completely neutral, and flips open the file, and it's not about her at all.

"Steve Rogers," she says, after scanning the page for a moment. "The guy you pulled out of the ice?"

"That would be the one," he says. She looks up. He's leaning back in the chair now, arms crossed. "There was an incident at a SHIELD research facility recently. An object was stolen."

"The tesseract."

"That's correct. Agent Barton was there. He was...compromised."

Leila tries to ignore the way her gut twists at those words. "Compromised" is another one of those spy words that could mean anything, that conjures up a million worst case scenarios in her head. She hates that and she hates that she hates it.

"Compromised," she repeats.

"There's more information in the file," he says, and she hates how his voice sounds: sympathetic to everything she's trying very hard not to feel. "You can read it on the plane."

"You want me to...what? Find Barton? What does Steve Rogers have to do with that? Why isn't Natasha here too?"

"No." Fury stands up. "I need you to talk to Captain Rogers. Convince him to help us retrieve the tesseract."

"And Barton's...what, collateral damage?" She can't help the words that slip out. All she can do is wrap them up in casual body language-crossed arms, leaning back against the wall, tied up in a bow shaped like a smirk.

"Believe me when I tell you that finding the tesseract is the only way to find Barton. And if we don't, he's not going to be the only collateral damage we have to worry about."

The smile slips of Leila's face as she studies the man in front of her. He's a spy and a liar just like her, just like everyone else here, but there's something solid about him, and she can’t put her finger on it so she’s not sure how she feels about it, but it's putting her at ease for the moment.

"So you need Captain Rogers to get the tesseract because he's done it before," she says.

"That's right."

"And you need me to be the one to convince him, because..."

"Because things might get messy. Retrieving the tesseract might turn out to be a two person job." He heads for the door.

"That doesn't really answer my question."

Fury's halfway out the door when he pauses, looks at her, and says "Because I said so." Then he leaves the room, adding without looking at her "You have twenty minutes before the jet leaves the airfield. It's supposed to rain in New York. I'd pack a sweater."

Leila watches him go, and then flips through the file again. It's not well organized, in her opinion-it's got different pages on Captain Rogers, on the incident at the research facility, and more, all stacked together like some kind of horrible frankenfile. She decides to make sense of it once she gets on the plane, and looks at the first page one last time before closing it.

"Okay, Captain America," she murmurs. "Let's chat."

**Author's Note:**

>  **For existing MM readers:** So, as you know, this fic was originally posted as the first two chapters of [Mirror, Mirror](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7643125/chapters/17401075). That fic was initially going to contain all of Leila's plotlines, with a few spin-offs to focus on other secondary characters. Recently I decided to instead divide the stories by plotline, in order to make it easier for me to keep track of, and to make it easier to do plotlines involving more than one OC. 
> 
> So now Mirror, Mirror is a collection/series, not a single fic, and this is the first part of it. The next part focuses on the events of The Avengers, and has been retitled "Battle Royale," but keeps the same URL and--aside from the first two chapters--the same content. You do not need to reread the chapters in order to understand what's happening. 
> 
> If you're annoyed because you prefer stories to be in one file instead of in collections, you can read the whole thing on [FF.net]() instead. It's pretty much the same thing, just in a single fic, and with no images or links.
> 
>  **For new readers:** This fic is gen and there are others that will be too, but in terms of the overall series, the big ship is Steve Rogers/Leila. Steve/Leila (or Snowcap, as I like to call them) are very, very slowburn, and the story continues even after they get together. Leila also has a pre-endgame relationship with Brock Rumlow (and also some past ships that get touched on) but her primary ship is Steve. 
> 
> There will also be some other ships that get significant screentime, including Pietro Maximoff/OC and Antoine Triplett/OC (neither of those OCs are Leila.) 
> 
> Leila's faceclaim is Nina Dobrev, that's how I picture her, but you can picture her however you want, I'm not your mom.
> 
> Shameless self-promo: Eventually I want to set up a blog specifically for this series (and am close to doing so, I just need to finish the theme for it), but in the meantime you can check out my general writing blog [here,](http://comealongpixie.tumblr.com) which has tags for [Leila,](http://comealongpixie.tumblr.com/tagged/ch:-leila-whittaker) [Snowcap,](http://comealongpixie.tumblr.com/tagged/snowcap) and [the series itself.](http://comealongpixie.tumblr.com/tagged/v:-mm)
> 
> Lastly, if you feel like it, please leave a review! I'm open to constructive criticism and would love to hear what you think!


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